Another year, another series of technical issues on Ciao!
Another year, another series of technical issues on Ciao!
Member since:01.04.2006
Reviews:10
Members who trust:51
I have only ever ventured away from Nokia phones once in my relatively short experience of owning mobile phones. I started with the brick like 5110, moved onto the short and dinky 8310, then the flashy and stylish 3100 and at the end of 2004 I took delivery of Plain Jane Super brain, the 2600, which has recently been consigned to the kitchen draw following a further upgrade.
When I originally took delivery of the 2600 it had only just been released by Nokia and despite its short foray into the market it didn't cost me a penny to upgrade thanks to my contract with Vodafone. If you wanted to buy this phone now, it is still available second hand on various auction websites with prices ranging from £20-£80. Alternatively, Carphone Warehouse do stock these for the princely sum of £89.99 to buy outright. The actual price is significantly less than most newer, more modern mobiles and this is due to in my opinion the lack of
built in camera. The 2600 is mobile phone designed for use purely as a mobile phone, it has no real gimmicks to attract younger mobile phone users, but it is very functional.
Designed in my opinion for heavy mobile phone users, the 2600 is compact and lightweight. It measures only 10.7cm x 4.6cm x 2cm and weighs only 94.5g, like most newer mobile phones the 2600 will not cause you to walk around lob sided due to its size and weight. The picture above is identical to my phone, except that I have customised mine thanks to the removable front and back covers to make more of a personal statement.
The high resolution colour screen only supports 128 x 128 pixels and 4,096 colours. Based on today's standards this is prehistoric with most new Nokias supporting in excess of 60,000 colours. Personally I cannot tell the difference between the display on this phone and my new Nokia 6020. In a nutshell, the lack of colours does not affect the quality of the phone in any way.
One of the major factors that left me impressed with the 2600 aside from the range of features and the ease of use associated with any Nokia mobile phone was the battery life. The 2600 is powered by BL-5CLithium battery with official Nokia statistics stating that it should remain charged for 250 hours on standby and should provide 3.5 hours of talk time. From experience I found that I could attain anything up to 5 hours talk time over a 4 day period with plenty of juice remaining in the battery. I was impressed.
The 2600 is very easy to use and retains all of the standard features associated with Nokia. It has polyphonic ringtones, wallpapers and themes that can be adjusted. There are 3 pre-installed games, mobile soccer, bounce and Nature Park which provide a reasonable amount of amusement but the 2600 really shines in other areas. The phone has the ability to store 200 entries within the phonebook memory before any need to be saved to the actual SIM card.
The phone cannot receive MMS text messages, which again isn't a problem for me, but it does allow SMS messaging. The inbox holds up to 60 text messages and automatically overwrites them meaning you will never miss a text due to the box being full. There is a message counter so that you can keep track on your usage and possible popularity!
Standard Nokia features aside such as the alarm clock, vibrating alerts, calendar, stop watch, speed dialling, call register and reminders the 2600 incorporates a spreadsheet facility and currency converter which I found very helpful on my travels. I would use the spreadsheet to keep track of expenses and the currency converter to be creative with my expense invoices after being abroad. It is much easier to use the currency converter on the phone rather than trying to access a website and locating the exchange rate for the date in question.
In summary I was delighted with the service I received from the 2600, I took the chance to upgrade only for a change rather than out of necessity. The call quality never caused concern. I could always hold perfectly clear conversations where I could hear the caller and they could hear me when walking in noisy environments. Durability was also a strong point with the 2600 despite being thrown, dropped and nearly crushed by a car. It did take on scratches like iron to a magnet but the fascia never broke, the screen remained intact and it continued to function until the day it was placed away into the kitchen draw.
I couldn't see this phone appealing to anyone under the age of 30. It doesn't have a camera and won't allow you to receive pictures from your friends, but if you are a heavy business user who needs a practical no frills mobile phone then I suggest that you take a long look at the 2600.
Advantages: Business functions, mp3 support, noiseless turnoff and more Disadvantages: Bad photo/video camera, alarm feature is not comfortable, no USB/IR support
Dmytron 13.07.2009 ·
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